Students entering Parsons share a common first-year experience. The same course sequence constitutes the first year of every BFA and BBA program, providing a foundational experience that familiarizes students with the tools, methods, and skills of art and design. First-year courses prepare students for life as skilled and socially aware artists and designers. Classes focusing on broadly relevant design concepts, tools, and methods—including studios exploring 2D and 3D processes, drawing, and digital design as well as liberal arts seminars—bring together students who are passionate about all kinds of art and design and who will one day forge new paths in an array of disciplines.
Drawing on the breadth and depth of expertise in design theory and practice at Parsons, this new Master of Arts program offers students the opportunity to explore design as both a field of scholarly research and an agent of social change.
Launched in fall 2010, this Master of Arts program allows students to engage in the evolving field of fashion studies. Using an interdisciplinary approach, students explore fashion as object, image, text, practice, theory, and concept and develop a critical understanding of fashion and its complex global intersections with identities, histories, and cultures in the contemporary world.
Offered jointly with the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, the History of Design and Curatorial Studies program leads to a Master of Arts degree. Graduates go on to careers as historians, curators, and scholars in museums, universities, historic houses, auction houses, and galleries.
Part-time faculty member Jeffrey Rosenfeld took his Design for Aging Populations class on a tour of 305 West End Avenue, a nationally recognized Senior Residence....
Fantastic Fauna from China to Crimea Image-Making in Eurasian Nomadic Societies, 700 BCE-500 CE Explores the zoomorphic imagination and image-making of Eurasian nomads and their...
Design, Displacement, Migration: Spatial and Material Histories gathers a collection of scholarly and creative voices—spanning design, art, and architectural history; design studies; curation; poetry; activism; and...
Recently published by Routledge, Caroline Dionne’s book Design Theory, Language and Architectural Space in Lewis Carroll offers spatial theories of the emergent based on a...
Robert Smithson, Land Art, and Speculative Realities, a new book by Rory O’Dea, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art and Design at Parsons, was released on...
Five new paintings and a series of works on vellum comprise Mequitta Ahuja’s exhibition, her first at Thierry Goldberg Gallery. Ahuja describes her own aesthetic…
Organized by Niki Kriese of ADHT, this lecture series features Parsons staff-members who are creative practitioners in their ‘off-hours.’ Seven artists will present and discuss…
Violence and Virtue: Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Slaying Holofernes” Uffizi Gallery, Florence Inspired by the Museum of Modern Art’s experimental web exhibition Design and Violence, students in…
Mona Sharma, From Justice Takes a Holiday series, Vector drawing printed on vinyl, 2ft by 4ft, 2013 A Bomb, With Ribbon Around It South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) Annual…
The current exhibition at Algus Greenspon Gallery in the West Village harbors the 1980-1983 paintings of Peter Young. “Linear Weave (Vertical Fold)” is a step…
Dominican designer Gigi Polo is a Parsons graduate from the Communication Design Department. She launched her studio—Myellow Boots—in 2005, offering services to small and…
Salvatore Emblema’s paintings are like Rothkos dipped in water. The vibrant colors usually centered around the canvas’ midlines drip out of bounds and lose saturation…
Photo of Sabrina Gschwandtner by Jason Spingarn-Koff Sabrina Gschwandtner is a visual artist who lives in New York City. She has exhibited her artwork internationally, at…